THE IEP: INTEGRATING CONTENT AND THE FOUR · PDF fileTHE IEP: INTEGRATING CONTENT AND THE FOUR...

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RESOURCE BOOK 1 THE IEP: INTEGRATING CONTENT AND THE FOUR SKILLS One important part of the IE Program is in helping students develop both a responsibility for their own language learning, as well as a degree of learner autonomy. At minimum, their responsibility is to come punctually, to attend regularly, and to complete their assignments. As obvious as this may seem, the students who fail IE classes never do so because of their lack of language ability, but because they fail to meet these commitments. Please make students aware of this responsibility. The simple expediency of having all your students fill out a little ID card with a picture, telephone number, e-mail, and address can help you in the future should you need to contact any of them. In a few cases, students may have some emotional problems or be experiencing difficulties in adjusting to university life. A good practice, in the first class of the semester, is to make students aware of the counselling centre at the university. Brochures are available in the English Department office. No doubt, you will become aware of these students over the term. Please inform the IEP Coordinator of them and try to keep track of them in your course. Another aspect of language learning is for students to learn how to monitor their progress. Each student should reflect on how he or she might improve their language ability, develop learning strategies, and participate as fully as possible in classroom activities.. Returnee students who have spent several years abroad in an English-speaking environment usually will enter the program at IE Level III, take an IE Seminar in their second semester, and may choose additional IE Seminars in the following year. Many of these students will be fluent speakers of English. You should be sensitive to their needs for challenging material and be prepared to adapt your activities accordingly, emphasizing group projects with them. Furthermore, seek to challenge them by maintaining an “English only” classroom through negotiating a fine or a individual contract system. Some researchers, such as Rod Ellis in Instructed Second Language Acquisition: A Literature Review (Ministry of Education, New Zealand, 2005) note that small group work is only effective in English language learning if the language the students are using is English. In terms of error correction, Ellis (2005) also suggests that the correction be explicit rather than a “recast” in which the teacher subtly repeats the word or phrase, but corrects them. This often goes unnoticed by students. During small group activity, you may be monitoring student small group discussion. Your presence alone may ensure that the conversation stays mostly in English. I. SPEAKING SKILL The success of the IE program depends on your ability to create a classroom environment in which students speak in English as much as possible, particularly in small group work such as the newspaper discussion. Students should be encouraged in every way to use only English in class. Some teachers

Transcript of THE IEP: INTEGRATING CONTENT AND THE FOUR · PDF fileTHE IEP: INTEGRATING CONTENT AND THE FOUR...

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THE IEP: INTEGRATING CONTENT AND THE FOUR SKILLS One important part of the IE Program is in helping students develop both a responsibility for their own language learning, as well as a degree of learner autonomy. At minimum, their responsibility is to come punctually, to attend regularly, and to complete their assignments. As obvious as this may seem, the students who fail IE classes never do so because of their lack of language ability, but because they fail to meet these commitments. Please make students aware of this responsibility. The simple expediency of having all your students fill out a little ID card with a picture, telephone number, e-mail, and address can help you in the future should you need to contact any of them.

In a few cases, students may have some emotional problems or be experiencing difficulties in adjusting to university life. A good practice, in the first class of the semester, is to make students aware of the counselling centre at the university. Brochures are available in the English Department office. No doubt, you will become aware of these students over the term. Please inform the IEP Coordinator of them and try to keep track of them in your course.

Another aspect of language learning is for students to learn how to monitor their progress. Each student should reflect on how he or she might improve their language ability, develop learning strategies, and participate as fully as possible in classroom activities..

Returnee students who have spent several years abroad in an English-speaking environment usually will enter the program at IE Level III, take an IE Seminar in their second semester, and may choose additional IE Seminars in the following year. Many of these students will be fluent speakers of English. You should be sensitive to their needs for challenging material and be prepared to adapt your activities accordingly, emphasizing group projects with them. Furthermore, seek to challenge them by maintaining an “English only” classroom through negotiating a fine or a individual contract system. Some researchers, such as Rod Ellis in Instructed Second Language Acquisition: A Literature Review (Ministry of Education, New Zealand, 2005) note that small group work is only effective in English language learning if the language the students are using is English. In terms of error correction, Ellis (2005) also suggests that the correction be explicit rather than a “recast” in which the teacher subtly repeats the word or phrase, but corrects them. This often goes unnoticed by students. During small group activity, you may be monitoring student small group discussion. Your presence alone may ensure that the conversation stays mostly in English. I. SPEAKING SKILL The success of the IE program depends on your ability to create a classroom environment in which students speak in English as much as possible, particularly in small group work such as the newspaper discussion. Students should be encouraged in every way to use only English in class. Some teachers

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employ a point system with their students. Others have student contracts, agreed to by students at the beginning of the class. A number of teachers negotiate a policy with their students by taking students' suggestions for fines at the beginning of class and voting on the outcome. Students who use Japanese in class might pay a small fine (to be used for a class party), or to bring candies for their classmates. Insist on these conditions early in the course and they will be easier to maintain later. You also should insist upon your students answering in complete sentences and in using English as much as possible in small group activities. During small group work, you should correct student errors by "recasts," echoing what a student has just said, but in a grammatically correct form. These should be made explicit to the student so that he or she is aware of the correction, but not embarrassed. Oral activities should stem from listening or reading or writing, and in turn, lead to other activities. The common thread in an IE class should be the themes that have been identified for each level. Weaker students will need considerable assistance before speaking in class. Activities where they write down an answer, read or listen to an answer and then practice variations with a partner, and in small groups are often very effective in getting students to respond orally. Your classroom activities always should include a speaking component. Interchange 2 (4th ed.) offers many activities for students to communicate with each other. You should try to take full advantage of these. In addition, many texts on language learning and on classroom activities can be found in the resource center in the English Department. There DVDs as well. Both types of material are available for two-week loans. I.(a) INFORMATION GAPS

Central to the idea of communicative language teaching is the information gap activity. Information gap activities are those language learning activities in which a pair of students work on solving a common problem. Each of the students has a unique piece of information. Partner A might be role playing someone making a phonecall about renting an apartment. Partner B would have information about the apartment such as the amount of rent, its location, and size. In information gaps, both students have a need to communicate, and have an equal amount of information to express. Discussions where a decision has to be reached are more or less "opinion gaps" and better students tend to do all the talking. One of the quickest and most effective ways to pair students is to have each student work with the student sitting behind. This way, they cannot read each other's papers. One example of an information gap with a small group of students is to give each student one picture from a sequence of pictures. None of the students is allowed to show his or picture to others, only to describe the picture. Together, the group must decide upon a sequence. I.(b) ADAPTING A TEXT

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New Interchange 2 (4th ed.) features short reading and listening passages and writing activities that should be used to initiate conversation. Additional activities such as “interchanges,” an information gap task with partners enliven the text further. These are highly motivating and provide a good opportunity for language learning. The following suggestions illustrate different activities using dialogues from the text. 1. Melodrama - students read a passage several times exhibiting different emotions -- shy/confident, energetic/tired, happy/sad, fast/slow, breathless/sleepy, angry/laughing, intelligent/foolish. This could be done with some students drawing cards for the emotions they are to express while other students try to guess. 2. Recreate the Dialogue - after listening to the dialogue several times, students write down what they think they heard. These dialogues are re-read to the class and the students decide which is the most accurate. 3. A Giant Step - encourages students to speak louder because they have to carry on a conversation while standing one giant step away, then two, three, and so on.

4. Prompt Your Partner - where one student with a book prompts two other students with the lines for a dialogue. 5. Eye Contact - while one student tries to make eye contact, the second tries to avoid eye contact; 6. Pantomime Actions - each student lists as many actions as he or she can think of such as tying their a shoe, drinking a can of pop, or brushing their hair which they might do while having a conversation. Then the students read the dialogue and pantomime the actions. 7. Pantomime Response - where one student reads one side of a conversation, and the other pantomimes the replies. Other students in the group have to guess what the mime is trying to say. 8. What's the Word? - each student selects up to 5 new vocabulary words and writes a sentence for each one. In small groups, each student reads his sentences whistling or shouting "blank" when he comes to the word he chose. The other students in his group have to guess the word. 9. Hangman on Your Back - one student traces out a new vocabulary word on a second students's back. The second student has to guess the word. 10. Word Jam - the teacher shouts out a word, and students in small groups have 3 minutes to think of as many related words as possible. Afterward, the teacher gives points for each "original word," a word named only once. II. WRITING SKILL Aside from journal writing, book reports, and project work, writing in IE classes should be used to initiate speaking activities, or consolidate vocabulary that students have learned. Emphasize communicative writing rather than grammatically correct work or knowledge of

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particular forms such as paragraphs or essays. Your students will be getting enough formal writing practice in the IE Writing Section. The writing in the IE Core Section should be of an expressive kind. There are many suitable activities. Students might exchange memos or letters related to speaking or listening activities. Then they would reply to one another in writing or through pair work or a small group discussion. In addition, students might jot down notes for a conversation. They also might be asked to create a dialogue or scene and record it as a class assignment. Alternately, they might interview family members and create and oral history. III. LISTENING SKILL Instructors using listening activities in an IE Core class should try to keep the material short. Video sequences should be shown several times. As well, language learners need challenging tasks that require them to focus on different aspects such as comprehension, cultural differences, and vocabulary. You should present your listening tasks in three distinct phases. These are pre-listening, tasks while listening, and a post-listening or consolidation phase. You should give students an activity or specific purpose while watching a video sequence. It is far easier for them to listen selectively than to try to understand everything they hear. Before showing a video sequence, you should be encouraging the students to think about what they already know about a topic through small group discussion, or brainstorming activities. When you present feature films to students, you might also encourage students to try to listen for the relationships between the speakers and their respective status.

Students should listen to the material several times, ideally, with a slightly different purpose for each listening. You should encourage them to answer general questions about their listening rather than focusing on individual words and phrases, especially initially. After each listening, you should have students check what they have learned with other students. This allows them to evaluate their own listening and even to identify what they should be listening for when the material is replayed to them.

The Interchange 2 (4th ed.) text comes with a CD rom of short dialogues and. A variety of English dialects can be heard. The Interchange series has a DVD from the series which can be borrowed from the Teachers Resource Center.

III.(a) TEACHING WITH VIDEO SEQUENCES You should never spend an entire class viewing a film. Research suggests a maximum viewing time of 20 minutes even for students who are listening to material in their native language. In any case, our IE students already are exposed to extensive listening in their IE Listening Sections. And experience suggests far shorter viewing times with frequent opportunities for students to respond to the material or to discuss what they are viewing. If you wish your students to watch an entire movie, then leave the DVD with the AV

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Library, 1F, Building 8. Make viewing the DVD an assignment to be completed outside of class time instead of spending so much time on this activity. Several resource books on using video materials are in the English Department Teachers Resource Center. These include Video by Richard Cooper, Mike Lavery, and Mario Rinvolucri (Oxford University Press: Hong Kong, 1991), and Susan Stempleski, and Paul Arcadio, (eds), Video in Second Language Teaching: Using, Selecting, and Producing Videos for the Classroom (TESOL: New York, 1992) and Susan Stempleski and Barry Tomalin's Video in Action (Prentice Hall: New York, 1990). III.(a)i Prediction Activities Of the many options for using video sequences to teach language learning, some of which are described elsewhere in this guide, there are eight approaches to creating prediction activities. These in turn should lead to conversation work.

PREDICTION ACTIVITIES 1. Show only the picture. 2. Play only the soundtrack. 3. Show the pictures to some; the soundtrack to others. 4. Play both the pictures and soundtrack. 5. Play only the beginning. 6. Play only the end. 7. Leave out the middle. 8. Play the sequence out of order.

In general, teachers using video sequences for language learning should manipulate their playing of the video in order to create information gaps. Small groups of students working together must find out the missing information. DVD technology offers pause, /replay, sound on and off, captions on and off, and freeze frame controls that make it possible to play one scene many different ways. Even easier is to find the video sequence on YouTube where it is easy to time it and manipulate it with a computer. All classrooms are equipped with HDSL lines and laptops can be signed out from the Koushi hikaeshitsu, teachers’ preparation rooms. Some of the best techniques are summarized as follows: 1. Video Title: Brainstorming - students are given the title and speculate on the content of the video, or where groups of students brainstorm issues or problems related to the video. 2. Semantic Mapping - of great use with nonfiction or documentary material because students anticipate some of the vocabulary and the teacher and students list these in semantic maps. 3. What's the Situation? - show students a scene with clearly identifiable characters, time period, location, and situation, and ask them where? when? why? what? For IE III, Unit 3, “Geography,” there is a heart-rending scene in The City of Joy where an Indian

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man and his family coming from rural India are defrauded of their money. In Kramer vs Kramer, for IE III, Unit 1, Psychology,” there is a scene where Joanna (Meryl Streep) has packed her bag and leaves Ted (Dustin Hoffman). Steel Magnolias might be used in IE II, Unit 2, “The Workplace” is a scene where M'Lynn Eatenton (Sally Field) is distraught at the funeral of her daughter, Shelby (Julia Roberts). 4. What's the Message? - use a drama or part of a documentary involving a conversation between two people. Groups of students try to guess what the characters are saying. The same two DVDs just mentioned could serve here as well. 5. 20 Questions - freeze a scene. This could be with almost any video sequence at any level. Groups of students pick an object and their partners try to guess which one it is. The questions and answers should follow a certain sequence: "Is it a piece of clothing?" "Yes." Do men wear it?" "Yes." "Is it his hat?" "Yes, you win." 6. What Can You See? - show a sequence where there are clearly identifiable objects, or items of clothing. Students receive lists of objects, or clothing, some of which appear in the scene and have to check off those that do. Alternately, before showing the video sequence to students have groups of students brainstorm what they might expect to see in the scene. The wedding scenes in Father of the Bride and City of Joy, IE III, Unit 1, “Psychology” or used for IE III, Unit 3, “Geography” offer excellent material. 7. Sex Change - show a scene which is primarily of men or of women. Ask the students to describe how the scene would like if played by members of the opposite sex. The hair salon scene in Steel Magnolias, IE II, Unit 2, “The Workplace” might work well here as students might suggest a barber's shop with such characters as the local mayor, a college football star, and a groom all getting their hair cut. 8. Point of View - choose a short sequence with plenty of action. Form the students into several different groups, each describing the scene from a different point of view. This is also an excellent way to reinforce the concept of the point of view as a literary term. For example, in Kramer vs Kramer, for IE III, Unit 1, “Relationships,” the scene where Joanna (Meryl Streep) has packed her bag and is leaving Ted (Dustin Hoffman) could be described in a first person narrative from Joanna's perspective. It might also be described in a first person narrative from Ted's perspective, or as one from Billy's perspective. In addition, the story could be told in an omniscient way, and in a third person narrative. After each group has finished writing their narrative, then new groups are formed with one member from each of the first groups. The members of the new group read their narratives to each other and try to guess which point of view and which character is being depicted. 9. Reading a Part - select a scene from a video sequence for which there is a transcript. Get the students to rehearse a scene and then compare their version with the movie. Among the films for which the English Department has scripts are Anne of Green Gables, and

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Back to the Future (IE I, Unit 1, “Memories”). 10. Eye Witness - choose a scene which focuses on a single character. Ask students to describe the character's appearance. Of the many potential scenes is Big Man Japan, IE I, Unit 1, “Childhood.” 11. Focus on Relationships - students analyze a relationship in a scene. In Kramer vs Kramer, Ted (Dustin Hoffman) learns that becoming a better father means he can't spend as much time on work and his boss fires him. - the relationship between Ted and Jim is that of ( ) friends

( ) colleagues ( ) boss and employee How do you know?

12. Timelines - working with "timelines," a line drawn in their books, students fill in the sequence of actions in a scene. In Indian in the Cupboard, IE I, Unit 1, “Childhood,” a boy finds a mysterious top that comes to life. 13. Culture Comparisons - students draw a line in the middle of a page writing the name of Japan on one side and another culture on the other. They watch a scene. They list three things that differ between the cultures and three that are the same. 14. What's the Product? - don't show the entire commercial to students but have them guess the product or service being offered. 15. Backwards - choose a complete scene of about 30 seconds showing a character in action. Set the video at the end of the sequence and students reconstruct what came first. Then show the entire sequence, students noting the missing details. One good choice might be to use an action sequence from a Charlie Chaplin film. 16. Captioning - works best with silent Charlie Chaplin films such as The Gold Rush (IE I, Unit 5, Travel), Modern Times (IE II, Unit 2, The Workplace, and Unit 4, Biography), and City Lights (IE III, Unit 1, Relationships). You stop the scene before the caption is shown and the students write down captions. 17. Realtime Voiceovers - students view a documentary without sound, then write and record commentaries on recorders to be played with the scene later. 18. Strip Dialogues - play a scene for students and give them the dialogue cut into strips. They are to choose the correct sequence for the conversation. 19. Subtitles - students view a scene subtitled in Japanese. Play it without sound and ask them to write the colloquial English for the subtitles. 20. Watchers/Listeners/Readers - the class is divided into three groups in different areas of the

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classroom. One group watches the film, the second listens to the scene on a tape recorder, and if there is either a transcript or a story, a third group reads it. All three groups have the same amount of time to view, listen, or read and the sequence may be repeated. All three groups are asked where the scene takes place, who is in the scene, how many people are in the scene, what happens, and why. There are many suitable films that can be used with this instructionally rich technique. One is Never Cry Wolf (IE III, Unit 3, “Environment”). Another might be that a young Farley Mowat (Charles Martin Smith) enters a wolf den and finds a mother and her cub, a scene which is described in the novel by the same name by Farley Mowat. 21. Role Plays and Debates - are based on either the characters appearing in a scene or on an issue raised in a video sequence. Once again, Kramer vs Kramer, (Unit 1, Relationships) is a good choice. Students develop dialogue for the scene where Joanna (Meryl Streep) leave her husband and son. They can also debate such issue of whether mothers or father make better single parents, whether divorce is easier today than before, and whether 18 is too young to be married. III.(a)ii A Sample Mini-Lesson Using A Video Sequence The following sample lesson shows how the video Father of the Bride might be used with an IE III class. The initial activity is a survey. Later, working individually, or in pairs, students describe the characters' feelings.

Class Survey Previewing Activity: Father of the Bride

1. Each student is given an interview question to ask of their classmates. At the end of the survey, students share their findings with the rest of the class. Questions might include: (a) What is the best way to meet a partner? (b) How long should people know each other before marrying? (c) Why do people get married? (d) What is the ideal age at which to be married? (e) What are the characteristics of a successful marriage? (f) What are the characteristics of a unsuccessful marriage? (g) Why is divorce increasing in Japan? (h) Should both husbands and wives work? (i) What are the benefits of a cross-cultural marriage? (j) What are the disadvantages of a cross-cultural marriage?

SAMPLE MINI-LESSON: IE III, Unit 1, Relationships

Semantic Mapping Listening Activity: Father of the Bride

2. Show the wedding scene in the video once. Then ask them to work in groups to brainstorm as many names of things, and items of clothing in the scene that they can. List this vocabulary in a semantic map on the board. This should be a competition between groups to see which one can think of the most objects such as candles, veil, limousine, wedding gown, bible, organ, and tie.

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3. Show the scene again and ask the students to check off the items as they see them. 4. List some of adjectives on the board such as: relieved, nervous, proud, sad, happy, embarrassed, disappointed, etc. Ask each group to choose one character: the father of the bride, the bride's mother, the bride, or the groom, or another character and describe their feelings in a short first person narrative paragraph. 5. Replay the tape, stopping it as the camera focuses on a different character. Then have the appropriate group read their description of the character's feelings. Alternately, get your students to write letters from one character to another, then exchange them and write a reply.

Writing Postviewing Activity Father of the Bride

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IV. READING SKILL Interactions 2 (4th ed.), the prescribed reading text for IE Levels I, II, and III is an excellent source of varied, interesting writing by well known authors. Its range of reading makes it very suitable in a thematically-organized program such as our own. You should assign the students reading and writing activities as homework and check their work in the following class. One effective way to get the students doing their reading homework is to assign discussion leaders, and give marks for the class discussion. Possibly, you might also give your students reading quizzes and a vocabulary test as well so that they review their work. These activities should all form part of your students' IE Core Section marks.

Please refer to the 2012 New Approaches in Teaching Reading DVD by Joseph Dias, Todd Rucynski, and Gregory Strong for explanations, demonstrations, references to teaching vocabulary, and to other reading skills.

You should encourage students to use their background knowledge in the pre-reading phase. Afterward, your students should comment upon issues related to their reading, or they should use the information or vocabulary they learned for some other activity. During pre-reading, you should encourage students to use what they already know about a text in terms of background knowledge and personal experiences. Sometimes, you may need to supply vocabulary or cultural knowledge outside the students' experience and knowledge. In addition, you should set a purpose for reading, for example, finding answers, making judgements. Pre-reading activities are done in class while students do post-reading activities outside of class. Reading activities should encourage students to remember what they have read and to understand it better. If a passage is very difficult, the teacher might give the students questions to answer while reading. Post-reading activities are very effectively handled through a discussion after reading. If questions come from a text, these should be supplemented with questions beyond the literal level.

PRE-READING ACTIVITIES 1. Have students preview an article by looking at the title, introduction, title, sub-headings, and illustrations. This is an excellent way to get an overall impression of the story. 2. Read the title, headings, and subheadings of an article to the students and have them predict what the story is about. Alternately, read the title and the first paragraph only. 3. To get a general idea of an article, have students skim the first and last paragraphs. Then get them to prepare three or four questions based on their predictions and read to find the answers. This level of skimming works well with longer texts to help the students identify the main ideas. 4. Prepare a list of six to eight key content words or phrases from the article and have the

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students make predictions about the text, or predict the kind of information in the text. 5. Show a picture or illustration (graph, map, or diagram) and have the students formulate questions and predictions about the text. 6. Draw on the students' personal experiences by relating personal experiences. Then ask students if they have had a similar experience or know anyone who has had one. 7. Give the students a topic such as a current news item or world event and have them identify issues related to the topic under discussion. Get them to share their opinions in small groups first, and then with the whole class. 8. Introduce the reading through a song or a part of a video.

ACTIVITIES DURING READING I. SCANNING Ask students to scan the passage to find specific information instead of reading it carefully. Scanning can also be used as a pre-reading activity. To practise scanning, pose questions about specific details and have the students scan to find the answers. Encourage the students to: 1. Read the questions first. 2. Classify the type of answer: ie., measurement, date, name, time, etc. 3. Use context clues: ie., units of measurement such as centimetres, metres, or feet; dates such as days or months; proper names, etc. 4. Scan through the text from beginning to end and use the headings and subheadings to see how it is organized. II. USING SIGNALS Important ideas and their relationship often are emphasized in texts in a variety of ways. Encourage students to identify these signals: 1. Graphical: type size, italics, underlining; 2. Syntactical: word order, topicalization; 3. Lexical: words such as "important," "relevant," "the subject is," "the conclusion is"; 4. Semantic: thematic words and sentences, summary or introductory sentences, repetition; 5. Schematic:story grammar, narrative schema (ie. who, what, when,

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where, why), expository text structures III. USING SQ3R IN PAIRWORK 1. Survey: First, students skim the article for its organization and content. Then discuss your views with a partner. 2. Question: In pairs, they prepare one or more questions on each section to answer while they read. Use the boldface headings. 3. Read: They read each section, looking for the answers. 4. Recite: Student stop after a specific period of time. The teacher asks them to turn over their papers so they cannot see it. Then the teacher asks them to recall the main ideas in each section and to check the answers to the questions. Students do this orally with a partner. 5. Review: After reading the article, students are asked to recall the text’s main ideas. They do this by restating them orally to their partners. They are not allowed to not look at the text as they talk.

ACTIVITIES AFTER READING I I. COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS Discussing reading is effective in consolidating knowledge about what has been read. You should move beyond simple, literal questions into questions of higher order thinking such as interpretive and expressive types. These kinds of questions are central to a deeper understanding a reading passage. I. TYPES OF QUESTIONS

II. SAMPLE QUESTIONS

1. Literal Comprehension These questions use similar words to those found in the text and the answers are directly, or explicitly stated in the text. 2. Interpretive Questions The student needs to infer what the author meant by "reading between the lines" and piecing together information scattered in the text. 3. Expressive Level These are the most advanced questions requiring the reader to express opinions,

1. Literal Comprehension Questions of recall and recognition: who, what, where, when, and how many, or those that require the reader to define, list, locate, or state information from the text. As well, the reader should find the main idea and supporting details; identify sequences, cause/effect relationships; make comparisons. 2. Interpretive Level The reader infers cause/effect, makes comparisons, generalizations, paraphrases

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and draw insights or ideas. and draws upon background knowledge. 3. Expressive Level The reader's feelings, opinion, and evaluation using information gained from the text to analyze problems, criticize, and create solutions.

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ACTIVITIES AFTER READING II 1. Have students prepare two-column summaries on the text. One column for their questions, another for their answers. Get the students to fold over their summaries so that only the questions are visible and then exchange them with other students as study guides. 2. Model questions on the text at the literal, interpretative, and expressive levels and have students prepare similar questions to ask one another. 3. Show students how to use the K-W-L strategy where they divide a page into three columns for what they Know about a topic, Want to Learn, (before reading text) and Learned (after reading). Students write the new information in this third column. Assist the students in classifying information in terms of main ideas, categories, and facts. 4. To understand a text, get the students to use a concept map, or graphic organizer: (a) stars where the main idea is in the centre and the facts are written in each corner of the star (b) tables to list or compare aspects of ideas (c) flowcharts or timelines for sequences of events (d) trees for classifications (e) sketches where a picture or symbol is labelled with key ideas 5. Assign different concept maps of the same text to different groups in the class. Afterwards, each group presents their concept map to the rest of the class. 6. A-Picture-in-Life approach might be used where students are given sets of 5-6 pictures of people that are related to the theme of the text and told to discuss their relation to the text. Each student chooses the picture he or she likes best or find most powerful. Then each student writes a brief journal entry from that person's perspective. The journal entries are exchanged and other students try to match journal entries with photographs.

ACTIVITIES AFTER READING II (Continued) 7. Have students list the main events in a story or summarize the main points of an article and compare their results with each other. Compare them with each other. 8. To discriminate between "for" and "against" arguments in a text, get students to underline the information that is for or against each point. 9. Write down a series of controversial statements about a topic (ie. No one should be allowed to purchase guns). Students underline information in the article to agree with or refute the statements in a discussion.

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IV.(a) VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT Increasing students' vocabulary should be an important part of your reading activities. Some teachers require their students to maintain vocabulary journals. This is a very good self-directed learning activity and students choose the words that interest them. In these journals, students record words, their meanings, and write sentences with them, and even make semantic webs with them indicating their relationships to other words. At the end of the term, the vocabulary journals are read and marked. More activities and a word list for each level of the IEP are found in the Scope and Sequence teachers’ guide. IV.(b) READING IN CLASS AND OUTSIDE

Class time should be used on pre-reading activities, and on teaching some of the text, and to explain how exercises in the text are to be done. You may require students to keep a vocabulary journal or student groups to prepare words and questions about them for class. Student groups also could be responsible for leading discussions of controversial ideas suggested by the readings. By making students responsible for an activity in class, prepare for a short quiz, or to show their homework, you will be able to ensure that your students are doing their course readings.

Much of your students' reading should be outside of class. During class time, you should concentrate on teaching reading skills such as skimming and scanning, reading for the main idea, and other reading process strategies. These reading activities should lead into other skill areas such as writing, or speaking and listening. Generally speaking, students should not spend too much of their class time actually reading. Instead, they should be responding to short readings, or to material they already have read outside of class time. V. THE FOUR SKILLS The reading, listening, and writing that you do should involve teaching predictive strategies and brainstorming, mapping, and dictating ideas to a partner. You should encourage your students to develop more self-reliance. While reading, you should teach them to use alternative strategies to dictionary use. You should encourage your students to use their awareness of the social function of the language in a listening activity to help them understand it. You should integrate the four skills as much as possible. One way to do this is to carry the same theme from listening to writing to reading and speaking. Students in IE I might read the passage “Parentese,” (pp. 152-163) in Interactions 2 about single parent, blended families, and working couples sharing childcare responsibilities. They might identify the qualities of a good father in the article. Small groups of students might rank these qualities in order of their importance and compare their results with other groups.

9. Compare a character in a story with someone the students know. 10. Have students individually, or in pairs, write a new title for the story, or write an ending. 11. Have students in pairs or small groups write a dialogue between characters in the text. After students have practised their dialogues, they read them to the class.

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Using one of the activities outlined elsewhere in this guide, you might have your students write a new ending for a video sequence. Next, they read out their dialogues. Your students could take the activity further by writing an entry about the qualities of a good parent. Several IE teachers are augmenting the activities described in this resource book through teaching students about culture. This is done by celebrating foreign holidays in class. Having students prepare holiday-related projects for class such as writing a ghost story for Hallo'ween, designing Thanksgiving placemats, creating a Christmas card, or even preparing a game for a final class party all have a place in the IEP. Another way to encourage students to greater efforts is to create a "Whole English Classroom." This is where students agree to do contracts of a prescribed amount of listening, writing, and reading outside of class time in order to get bonus marks. The teacher bases their marks on how much they are able to fulfil of the contracts. V.(a) CO-OPERATIVE LEARNING TECHNIQUES There are many co-operative techniques that can be used in class. Some of these are found elsewhere in this guide and include the most basic co-operative structure that of working in pairs as well as that of jigsaw readings where each member of the group has only a part of the article and group members must co-operate to complete a task such as summarizing the article. The basis of the approach is that students work together in small groups to complete an activity. V.(b) CORNERS AND INSIDE-OUTSIDE CIRCLE ‘Corners’ is a co-operative learning technique where each student moves to a corner of the room, representing a teacher-determined point of view or a teacher-determined alternative. The students in each corner discuss their point of view. Then new groups are formed where members from different corners form new groups and share their information. “Inside-Outside Circle” is an activity where students in two circles stand so that one circle is inside the other. Each student in the inner circle turns to face a student in the outer circle. Each pair forms a group and new groups are formed by rotating the two circles. This can be a good activity for mini-debates, for short dialogues and role plays. V.(c) STUDENT-GENERATED MATERIALS Students will enjoy classes where their interests, ideas, and experiences form part of the curriculum. This aspect of the course can be developed through student-generated materials. Some of these materials are listed below: 1. Story Grammar - have the students use the literary terms or "story grammar" to create a collaborative story. First, each student takes a paper and writes down 4 characters, describing their appearance, and ages. For example, one might list Madonna, Arnold Schwarznegger, Julia Roberts and Lady Gaga. These characters will be used in a story. Each student folds over the paper to hide the names and passes it on to a second student who adds a setting such as Shinjuku station at 12:00 pm, New Year's Eve, and then folds the paper over this additional information. The third student adds a symbol, for example, a doughnut as a symbol of eternity. The fourth student unfolds the paper and has 10 minutes to create a story using the information on the paper. This is a good way to familiarize students with literary terms, too.

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2. Family Tree - where students doing IE I, Unit 1, “Memories” present their family tress to a small group. Members of this group might then explain it to other class members in an information-gap activity. 3. Life stories - for IE II, Unit 4, “Autoiography,” have students list 10 real or imaginary events in their life on index cards and answer questions on them from other students. 4. Activity Photos - where students bring in photos of themselves doing an activity and report on the pictures in pairs, or exchange cards and assume new identities. 5. Baby Pictures - in IE I, Unit 1, “Memories,” have students wander around the room, asking questions, trying to match up students with their baby pictures.

6. Neighbourhood Maps - IE I, Unit 2, Neighbours, where students draw up 2 maps of their neighbourhoods and then give students directions to their house and to local landmarks. 7. Publishing - in IE II, Unit 4, Biography where the class produces a book together on a fieldtrip, or on a collection of personal narratives (happy moments, fearful ones, occasions of miscommunication). 8. Class Poems - created with a key line such as "Friendship is ..." for IE III, Unit I, “Psychology.” Another type is an acrostic where student groups have to think of a noun or a phrase starting with each letter in a key name such as "Neighbour" ("not far away," "elegant"...). 9. Interviews and Surveys - where students bring taped interviews to class about their jobs, or their life styles and ask one another listening comprehension questions. This could be used in IE II, Unit 2, “The Workplace,” and IE III, Unit 4, “The Media.” V.(d) CLASS FIELDTRIPS Among the most successful activities in the IE program in the past have been the class fieldtrips. Teachers have taken their students to the school fair at an international school. Teachers have taken student to productions of the Tokyo International Players of The Wizard of Oz and Big River. For insurance reasons, if you and your class are leaving the school grounds during school hours, you should notify the IE Coordinator and fill out an insurance form. A similar approach could be taken with visits to English language newspapers or media, or foreign businesses in which an English tour could be provided. Other opportunities might include visits to embassy libraries, the offices of non-governmental organizations, or to international trade shows or educational conferences where students might serve as volunteers in exchange for free admission to the lectures and book fair. Most of these organizations welcome the opportunity for community outreach.

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For students to gain the most from a fieldtrip, you should go over some of the vocabulary, the script or the story in advance if it is a play. For a play, there are many potential approaches including everything from working with a cloze script to reading a scene in class, to pantomime. After viewing the performance, students might complete an activity worksheet or write a paragraph or an opinion statement. VI. EVALUATION In the past, IE Core Section teachers have given many high grades to students largely on the basis of their group projects. Considering other aspects of a student's performance is important. A student=s grade should include marks for attendance and participation, homework assignments, individual projects, book reports, weekly topics, and reading quizzes and tests. There should be a range of scores in a class, representing the natural range of abilities among the students. It would be inappropriate to give too many students a final grade of 90% or higher solely because they completed their assignments and worked well together. These should be our normal expectations of our students. VII. IE III TRANSFER COURSE The IE III Transfer course is an intensive English class that meets weekly for 180 minutes. The course is based on the themes of (1)relationships, (2)cross-cultural values, (3)the environment, (4)the media. Each class is divided into IE Listening, Writing, and Core skills. Classroom activities include pairwork, role play, group discussions, and presentations, maintaining a journal for a secret friend, and analyzing and reporting upon two English novels. The IE Listening section of the course consists of listening to authentic English documentaries and dramas based on the four different themes of the course. In the IE Writing component, students will develop their ideas into short essays. Each piece of writing will go through several stages: brainstorming and discussing ideas, making a first draft, discussing it in a small group, conferencing with the teacher, revising, and then printing it on a computer or word processor. VIII. IE REPEATER CLASSES IE teachers who have worked with these students in IE Repeater Classes agree that these students have not failed because they lack the ability to learn English. Instead, they failed because they have poor study habits. They come to class inadequately prepared, without their homework done, often without their textbooks. Their attendance is poor and they are easily discouraged as well. From the first class, the teacher must be very pro-active, getting the students’ telephone numbers and addresses and calling them up immediately to warn them about missing classes. Teachers working with these students have to try to change these students' behaviours. Developing contracts with students is one approach. IX. IE SEMINARS IE Seminars have been one of the early features of the IE Program. The seminars are in the area of Literature, Linguistics, and Communication. Some IE Seminars involve studying a novel or anthology of stories.

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Recently, there has been renewed interest in the use of literature as content-based language teaching. It is useful way in teaching language to a class and as a source of extensive reading. If you use a novel, the literary terms can form part of the discussions and activities. Furthermore, diagramming the structure of a story or novel, reviewing the characters and events in it, note-taking, summarizing and paragraph writing are not only useful in explicating the literary text for students, but also offer potential for language learning. The sequence of instruction might follow: (1)pre-reading activities, (2)factual in-class work, (3)analysis, (4)extension activities. This division may be useful in discussing some of the language-based activities. Pre-reading activities for a novel or a chapter could introduce essential cultural or thematic information. Initially, you might think of the vocabulary as partially comprehensible through sentence and paragraph contexts, partially inessential, and partially made of key words which are essential to the story but hard for students to understand. The vocabulary which can be derived from context clues might be presented to the class in a cloze-type exercise. IX.(a) PRE-READING FOR A CHAPTER The following passage from the Amy Tan novel The Joy Luck Club (G. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1989) illustrates how cloze technique could be used with essential vocabulary and context clues.

As I remember it, the 1 side of my mother sprang from the 2 in our old house in Oakland. I was five and mother tried to 3 it from me. She 4 the door with a wooden chair, 5 it with a chain and two types of key locks. And when it became so 6 that I spent all my energies 7 this door, until the day I was finally able to 8 it open with my small fingers only to immediately fall 9 into the dark 10 . And it was only after I stopped screaming --I had seen the 11 of my nose on my mother's shoulder-- only then did my mother tell me about the bad 12 who lived in the basement and why I should never open the door again, (p.103). In addition, the first blank about the "dark" side of the narrator's mother could be discussed in detail in class because the idea that the narrator's mother is unbalanced and has a "dark side" is central to understanding the story. Obviously, the teacher might have to explain a word such as Oakland, a district of the City of Los Angeles. The same is true of a culturally-embedded word such as "the basement" of the house of which there are very few in Japan. A final pre-writing activity might be to involve students in a "focus-write" about a problem or situation in a story. The previous paragraph from Amy Tan's novel is from a chapter where a girl realizes that her mother suffers from mental illness. Before students read the chapter, the teacher might ask them to respond to the question "What would you do if you found out your mother was suffering from mental illness?" The students' responses would be discussed. As a result of doing these activities, students would be better prepared for their reading.

IX.(b) TEXT ANALYSES

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Analytical activities might also include visualizing certain descriptive passages in the text. This encourages students to return to the text for a different purpose than reading for comprehension. In this case, they would be looking for physical descriptions. Once more, the same passage from Amy Tan's novel can be used to illustrate this point. Students might attempt to draw the door to the basement of the house and even the layout of the house. Further analytical activities might include students in preparing timelines of events in the story or employing grids to show character differences. The timelines could form the basis of a summary while the grid could form the basis of a character sketch or of a comparison-contrast paragraph about two characters. Based on the ability of the students, the events in the timeline could be given to them in a scrambled order. The following two figures timetable events in the chapter "Half and Half" in The Joy Luck Club and show a character grid based on the novel.

Events: a) An-mei puts the Bible under the table leg. b) Ted and Rose marry. c) An-mei carries a Bible. d) Bing drowns in the sea. e) The Hsu family go to the beach. f) Mrs. Jordan thinks Rose is Vietnamese. g) Ted and Rose meet at Berkley. h) Ted leaves Rose.

IX.(c) EXTENSION ACTIVITIES

Type of Behaviour

Su Yuan Woo

Lindo Jong

An-Mei Hsu

Ying Ying St. Clair

1. proud

"I knew my mother resented ...she had nothing to come back with" (p.37)

2. unbalanced

"I could sense the unspoken terrors...that chased my mother..."(p.103)

3. competitive

"Auntie Lindo and my mother were best friends and enemies..."(p.37)

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Finally, extension activities with a novel might include periodic reviews of the material and the use of the novel to create role plays and different types of writing activities. For one thing, students might review the characters in the novel by an information gap activity called "Who Am I?" where the students question one another about characters in the novel. The teacher places the names of characters in on pieces of paper. The students draw these papers but do not see them and the paper is taped to their backs. The class mingles at the front of the room and each student asks another questions which will enable her to guess who she is supposed to be.

Each person can only be asked a single question at a time. Someone who had the character name "June Woo" on her back might ask other students these sorts of questions-- "Am I a woman? Am I a young woman? Do I live in America? Do I hate playing the piano?" --until the student can guess her identity. Another kind of extension activity might be to create a Japanese tanka, a poem which consists of five lines of 31 syllables in a sequence of 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7. The poem should reflect the theme of the story in a sensuous, imagistic way as in the following example from "The Red Candle" chapter in The Joy Luck Club.

The Red Candle

Little girl's red kite

Sharing her mother's rice bowl

Storm at the wedding

Wind fluttering red candle

Wart on her husband's bare back

There are many other potential activities. A good activity to encourage students to think along thematic lines is to have them match potential chapter titles with a brief summary of the chapter, or try to predict events in a chapter. Another activity is a "Pyramid Discussion" where the teacher prepares a list of statements about the theme, including opinions, and cliches, and incorrect information and gives it to students. Initially, each student ranks the thematic statements in order of their accuracy. Next, students form pairs and compromise on some of their opinions. Then they form groups of four to determine the same thing, and afterward, groups of eight. This is "the pyramid" part of this activity. At the end of the novel, or chapter, students might be given an incorrect summary of events to correct. They might do a role play of a conversation in the text. Group presentations might be organized on themes in the novel, and of course, essays could be assigned as well.